This article is missing information about Bandeirante expeditions for Drogas do Sertão, search for lost city of El Dorado and influence of Spanish Potosi silver lode in inspiring expeditions in search of silver and gold. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.(February 2014)

The São Paulo settlement served as the home base for the most famous bandeirantes.[Note 1] Most bandeirantes were descendants of first- and second-generation Portuguese who settled in São Paulo,[2] but their numbers also included many people of mameluco background (people of both European and Native American ancestries). Though they originally aimed to capture and force Indigenous Americans into slavery, the bandeirantes later began to focus their expeditions on finding gold, silver, and diamond mines. As they ventured into unmapped regions in search of profit and adventure, they expanded the effective borders of the Brazilian colony.

Contents

In addition to capturing natives as slaves, bandeiras also helped to extend the power of Portugal by expanding its control over the Brazilian interior. Along with the exploration and settlement of this territory[disputed– discuss] the bandeiras also discovered mineral wealth for the Portuguese, which they had been previously unable to profit from.

In the 1660s, the Portuguese government offered rewards to those who discovered gold and silver deposits in inner Brazil. So the bandeirantes, driven by greed, ventured into the depths of Brazil not only to enslave natives, but also to find mines and receive government rewards. As the number of natives diminished, the bandeirantes began to focus more intensely on finding minerals.

In spite of their ignorance of geography, a science unknown to the Paulistas of olden times, and with only the help of the sun, they penetrated the interior of the Americas, conquering tribes. Some went to the hinterland of Goias, as far as the Amazon river; others went all the way to the coast from the river Patos until the river Plate and as far as the rivers Uruguay and Tibagi; and going upstream along the Paraguay river as far as the Paraná [...] some crossed the vast hinterland beyond the Paraguay river all the way to the high mountains of the kingdom of Peru. The Paulistas had to fight against their enemies and against nature: in respect of the latter they had to battle against the weather and in respect of the former they had to battle against wrath and hate. The lack of supplies could have driven them to despair had it not been that they were used to eating the fruits of the hinterland: wild honey, wild nuts, sweet and bitter palmitos, and the roots of edible plants. (Pedro Taques de Almeida Paes Leme)[3]

„

“

However, a new breed of men was growing, wild, yes, and ungovernable, but one in whom the infusion of native American blood would soon result in a relentless increase in action and achievement. So while the Spaniards in Paraguay stayed where Irala had placed them, mostly treating with indifference the discoveries which the first Conquistadores had made, the Brazilians continued for two centuries to explore the country. These determined adventurers would spend months and months in the wild hunting slaves and looking for gold and silver, guided by what they had learnt from the native Americans. Eventually they managed to secure for themselves and the House of Braganza the richest mines and the largest territory in South America This acquisition was of all the inhabited earth the most beautiful part. (Robert Southey, 1819)[4]